Titan Trilogy 3.5-Black Soul

by T. J. Brearton

  William had no more ammo but he’d never loaded an AK-47 in his life anyway. He threw the empty rifle under the house and ran inside and snatched up the pistol he’d kicked into the corner. Booth hadn’t gone anywhere. He was still in the bedroom doorway, holding his hand out.

  “I’m a peaceful man. Please,” he whimpered.

  William went over to the young women and began to undo their bonds.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The young American woman wasn’t waking up.

  “Is she alright?” William asked.

  The other white girl just stared at him. She had backed up to the wall and sat motionless. The third girl answered in Spanish. William’s Spanish wasn’t great, but he got the gist of it — she’d arrived like this. Probably drugged up again.

  William went to get them some water from the kitchen sink. Nothing came out the tap. He found bottles of water in the fridge and set one next to the silent girl and handed the other to the Latina girl. She unscrewed the cap and drank until water poured from the sides of her mouth.

  He crossed the room and pointed the pistol at Booth’s head.

  “I’m bleeding. I’m cold,” the man said.

  “Who is he?”

  “He’s David Sausa.”

  “I know his name. Tell me about him.”

  “All I know is that it’s his ship. He owns it.”

  William felt the sweat still coursing down his body, the mud drying on his skin. There was one overhead fan, squeaking as it twirled, barely making a difference. The place had electricity, but no water.

  “What ship?”

  “The Voyager. The one being sunk tomorrow.”

  “He owns it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does he own this place?”

  “I don’t know. I think so.”

  William touched the tip of the barrel to Booth’s scalp, and the man winced.

  “Who are these women?” William asked. “Did you bring them here?”

  “No. No. I don’t have nothing to do with it.”

  “Who does?”

  Booth closed his eyes, shook his head, but said nothing. William pressed the pistol harder, and Booth cried out. “Alexandra! Alexandra.”

  “Who is that? I don’t know who that is.” But he thought he might — he pictured her getting into the tan car.

  Booth looked up, incredulity on his sweat-shined face. “You don’t . . . ? You’re FBI attaché? You don’t know who anyone is?”

  “I’m not FBI.” William pulled the gun away, leaving a mark.

  “I’m bleeding,” Booth moaned, clutching his arm.

  William paced around the room for a moment. He turned to the Latina girl, sitting at the table, finishing the water. “De dónde eres?”

  “A Honduras.”

  “You’re from here?”

  She nodded and wiped her mouth. She seemed shaken, but more together than the other girl, who was catatonic. And the young American woman from First Bight was still unconscious. There was no way to get them any medical attention. No phone in the house. No cell phone coverage. And Sausa was long gone with the only vehicle.

  “We need to wake her up,” William said. He was as close to a doctor as they were going to get. He tucked the pistol into his shorts and bent in front of the unconscious girl. “Give me a hand,” he said in Spanish.

  She came down from the table to help.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Emma.”

  Emma was beautiful, like a model, with large, dark eyes.

  “Okay, Emma, let’s sit her up.”

  The American girl was limp. William lifted her eyelid, determining her pupils were fixed and dilated. “Hold her up like that for a minute. Good.”

  He went into the bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet above the small sink and found nothing. On the floor, though, was a satchel. He unzipped it and riffled through the contents. There was a small vial of septocaine and one of xylocaine, which were local anesthetics, typically used in dentistry. There were also bottles of Halcion and Ativan. Anti-anxiety. No opioids.

  He left the bag in the bathroom knowing that local anesthesia wouldn’t account for the young American woman’s state. She could be having an allergic reaction to a drug, even cardiorespiratory depression. She might go into respiratory arrest.

  He took her pulse, found it weak. Her breathing was labored and irregular. The bronchospasm was costing her blood vital oxygen.

  “Sabes su nombre?”

  Emma shook her head. She didn’t know the American girl’s name.

  “Miss?” William snapped his fingers by her ear. He gently lay her back down, rolled her on her side and positioned her top leg so her hip and knee were at right angles. Then he tilted her head back and checked her airways. He eased her onto her back again started to perform CPR on her.

  Emma backed away on the floor and put a hand over her mouth. Tears slipped down her cheeks. Booth moaned in the doorway, he was bleeding to death. The silent girl continued to sit in her daze.

  William pumped the young American woman’s chest, sweat falling from his forehead. He counted, one two three four five. He blew into her mouth. He repeated.

  A minute passed. Maybe more. He realized he had no idea what time it was. Eleven at night? Earlier? Later?

  She sputtered. He stopped the CPR, rolling her back on her side. She coughed and gagged, her body convulsing for a moment, then stopped. Her eyes were squinted shut.

  Slowly, she opened them.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Her name was Nicole.

  She was still out of it, her brain not in gear yet, but at least she was awake, and drinking water. He didn’t want to barrage her with questions too soon. He had time; no one was going anywhere unless they left on foot. His biggest concern was that someone else was going to show up.

  He ripped a bathroom towel into strips and used it to tie off Booth’s arm and stem the bleeding. The man was moaning and his eyes were rolling back in his head. Even if the bleeding stopped, the bullet was poisoning his blood. Left untreated, he could eventually go into septic shock and die.

  William left Nicole in Emma’s care and got Booth outside, walked him down towards the surf. The man stumbled and nearly fell, crying, howling about his wound. The moon shone down and the stars filled the sky.

  “Talk,” William said.

  Booth started to babble something William couldn’t understand. William pushed him toward the water’s edge.

  “Tell me how it works. What do you do for Sausa? You get the girls for him?”

  Booth dropped to his knees, just yards away from the water lapping the shore. He dropped his chin to his chest. His shoulders bounced as he cried. “Nah. I told you that’s not me, man.”

  “Okay, that’s Alexandra. Then what? What do you do? What are you doing out here with underage girls? You’re involved in human trafficking.”

  Booth, slurping back tears and snot, looked up at William. William could see in his eyes it was true.

  “Who are your clients?”

  Booth just lowered his head again and sobbed.

  “Where is Rene Sterling? You know that name.”

  Booth stopped crying. He stared off over the water. He became eerily still. “Just kill me. I don’t deserve to live.”

  William didn’t know whether this was an act or not. Disgusted by Booth, frustrated he wasn’t getting anywhere, he walked away, wandering down to the beach.

  Music, faint, but unmistakable, drifted from around the point. He thought for a moment, then returned to Booth, wishing there was a phone in the house, a way to contact Hanna.

  He crouched down next to Booth. “Tell me more about David Sausa and Arnold Sterling. Have they built some kind of private police force down here?”

  Booth continued to gaze out over the water. His face was calm. It was as if he was making his peace, resigning himself to fate. He nodded, subtly. “A Canadian man was killed here, on the island. He was at La Cueva, in
Coxen Hole.”

  “I’ve read about it. So what? Who was he?”

  “Lacomb.”

  “Lacomb? And?”

  Booth nodded his head. “You gotta understand. There been plenty of deaths before that. But Lacomb was different. He was a friend of Sausa’s. Sausa said something needed to be done. Like the DR, Jamaica, Mexico, where they build walls around some of the resorts. But, too expensive. They thought a private police force was the answer. But they didn’t know how to do that. So they found people who would put it together.”

  “Okay. So that’s you? You put it together? Your cousin, the mayor?”

  “No. No. I just help with the guns on the island. Sausa, he call me up an hour ago. Said to meet him in Oakridge, he needed help. I was with my family. I have three kids. Please don’t—”

  “What are the women doing here? How are they involved?”

  Booth’s sorrowful eyes gleamed in the moonlight. “Them is the perks. For the men.”

  “Perks . . .”

  He nodded soberly.

  “Did Sterling know about this? About young women being used as perks for the guards? About Sausa himself sexually assaulting them? Raping them?”

  Booth shook his head, no. “I only work with Sausa. I don’t think the other man — Sterling — he don’t know.”

  Sterling found out though, William thought. Sometime after Rene left for her trip, Sterling grew to suspect what Sausa was doing, and that his daughter had become snared in the net.

  “But you knew,” William said to Booth. “How do you deal with it, huh? You say you’ve got kids. Got any daughters?”

  Booth turned his head, ashamed.

  “You look away, right? Just like that. You have your end to deal with; the guns. Doesn’t matter about the girls. If they were kidnapped, if they needed help and were lured in, if they’re just a free spirit looking for adventure. It’s just business. Right?”

  Booth said nothing and William left him there.

  He trudged up the beach towards the house. He went inside and checked on the women.

  Nicole was looking better, some color returning to her cheeks. Emma had heated bottled water on the stove and made some tea. The third young woman, still mute, was at least sipping tea from a mug.

  William offered them a smile, then closed himself into the bathroom.

  He sat down on the toilet lid and put his head in his hands. After the rush of the past hour, he was starting to crash. Images of the gunfire, bullet holes, body parts, flashed through his mind. Sterling’s head split open. The guard floating face down off the dock. Shooting the men here at the house. Their bodies were still outside, bleeding into the sand.

  William leaned over the sink, feeling the sickness bubbling up inside of him, oily and black. But nothing came out. His arms were trembling and he sat back and gripped himself. He closed his eyes and willed it past. Pure, unflinching dread. It felt crushing.

  He opened his eyes and looked down at the bag, unzipped, on the floor. He fished out one of the pill bottles. Ativan. He popped two pills before he had a chance to think any more about it. He was a recovering alcoholic. He’d never been a pill addict, but he knew it was all connected. But the pills were already inside of him now, so it didn’t matter.

  There was no dock on the beach, and he hadn’t seen a boat. Maybe something had been stashed in the jungle, but it might take half the night looking.

  He’d seen signs for Paya Bay resort, and he’d heard music. He doubted the beach extended there, but he could swim it. The problem was leaving the women behind.

  Booth had confirmed it: Sausa had conscripted a private militia to tend to the crime on Roatán the police were either unequipped to handle, ignoring, or involved in. Reports indicated assaults — carjacking, theft, kidnapping — were frequently executed by criminals posing as Honduran law enforcement. Booth tapped into the black market of guns. He probably had a deal with one of the gangs on the mainland. William didn’t know yet exactly how the human trafficking part worked, or why Nicole hadn’t run when she’d landed at the ferry dock, why she’d gotten into the tan car willingly. Drugs were one thing, but her judgement should’ve been somewhat intact. There was something else hanging over her head. Maybe it had to do with the young man from the scuba-diving photograph who’d been pictured with Rene.

  Anyway you cut it, it was a mess. A cabal of money and crime with innocent young women caught in the middle. He needed to get them to safety, and go for the resort. That was the plan.

  He came out of the bathroom and found the silent girl staring at him.

  “I want to go home,” she said.

  * * *

  Her name was Funi and she was originally from South Africa. Once she started talking, she didn’t stop. She was a runaway and had traveled north out of South Africa where she’d been kidnapped by Rastas from the D.R.C.

  The Rastas were a violent militia, formerly Hutu, known to keep sex slaves. They had nothing to do with the peaceful Rastafarian movement, only to have coopted some of the religion’s affectations, the dreadlocks and colorful hats.

  Funi had been six months with them until she was sold, taken by boat to Honduras with other victims, then another boat a week ago to Roatán. She didn’t know any of her abductors, but she’d heard them talk about “Calle 18.”

  William remembered Hosea’s stoned sermon outside the hospital. The cabbie had mentioned Calle 18. William had later researched them as one of two major Honduran gangs. Mara Salvatrucha was the other. They were originally Salvadorans who had migrated to the States during their civil war, rooted down in Los Angeles, until the war on drugs had pushed them out. They’d wound up in Central America, like bastard children the world had disowned.

  Sausa was recruiting them. At least, that was how it looked. Ordinarily a middle-aged American would have little pull with cutthroat Honduran gangs. But Sausa could be offering the means to expand their empire, to branch out from extortion and drug smuggling to human trafficking. The two gangs were also locked in competition. Gaining a toehold in the Bay Islands could give Calle 18 an edge.

  It was win-win all around.

  William got the young women on their feet. He gave them each a once over — Nicole’s pupils were still dilated, but the mydriasis was abating. He left them for a moment and returned to the beach.

  Booth was slumped over in the sand, struggling to hold on to consciousness. He looked up at William. William stood over him, wondering if he cared whether this man lived or died. But he had to care. Maybe it was the Ativan in his bloodstream now, but he was stirred to compassion. Even a piece of shit like Booth deserved a second chance.

  William got him up and walked him back to the house. Twice Booth fell to the ground.

  Inside, he put Booth in the bed. He set a bottle of water on the nightstand beside him and closed the door.

  He escorted the girls back down to the water. They waded in just far enough to keep their footprints off the beach. He led them towards the sound of the music in the distance.

  Emma yelped and jumped out of the water. She ran for the beach. “Something touched my foot,” she said.

  He picked her up and carried her back into the gently lapping surf.

  They continued to wade along the shore, keeping a watch for a beached boat. When the water started to get deeper and they ran out of beach, he had them huddle together in the underbrush.

  He gave Funi Sterling’s phone for safe keeping, then he handed Emma the pistol. In the dark, the three women huddled together uncomfortably in the brush, he showed her how to use it.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said, and he dove into the water and swam for the resort.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  For a while there was nothing. The steady kick of his legs, his arms pinwheeling slowly as he cut through the water. The salt water felt good. It washed away the mud, it cleaned his cuts and scratches; he felt the last of his facial bandages peel away. He swam for the far shore in the warmth of the bay beneath
the moonlight.

  The world was empty, and black, until the faces arose, the men he had killed at the camp, on the dock at Royal Playa. They swam up in his mind like ghosts rising from the bottom of the sea. And he saw Kevin Heilshorn, falling back into the garden as he shot him. He saw Jeremy Staryles, his face wrecked by a rifle shot, crawling through the mud, trying to breathe.

  William lifted his head and trod water for a second, catching his breath. He tried to shake off the visions. He reminded himself what they were — the product of synaptic activity, his brain reacting to the stress of the past few days. Long ago, before he’d been a cop, he’d studied the brain at a medical school in New York.

  After a moment he resumed swimming. He found his rhythm again, turning his head every fifth stroke to gulp in the air. Then every fourth breath, then third, until he was alternating his strokes with breathing. He was slowing down.

  He took a rest, gauging his bearings. He was about halfway there. He ducked his head back in the water and kicked for his destination, picking up the pace.

  His wife had once called him restless. Only happy when he’d wrecked everything and had to pick up the pieces. But that couldn’t work for very long.

  After his wife and daughter were murdered, a new career in law enforcement had saved his life. His first case as a detective was a young woman dead in a farmhouse. She’d had ties to organized crime, big money, and sex work. Maybe it had planted the seed.

  Some days he wished it had never happened. He wished he hadn’t been saved. But then he wouldn’t have met Jennifer Aiken — now called Hanna Becket.

  He wondered what it was about a person that made them this way — perpetually dissatisfied. He figured someone like him was meant for this life, ultimately. An endless chase. A never-ending fight.

  But he didn’t want to sabotage what he had with Hanna.

  He snatched breaths of air and kept his arms moving, his legs scissoring back and forth. When one of his hands scraped against coral, he reacted with a start, then realized it was a good sign. The shore was only thirty yards away.